President Vladimir Putin devoted most of his state of the
nation address on Thursday to
pledging that Turkey would long regret the recent shooting down of a
Russian warplane on the
Syrian-Turkish border, and to charges that Turkey was selling on oil from Isis.
This would not just be a case of a ban on Turkish tomatoes, he thundered, but
of far more serious consequences into the far future. It was a curious
performance from a leader who, with his annexation of Crimea, his incursions
into Ukraine, and his intervention in Syria, has startled and worried the world
with his bold and wilful policies.
The big picture was
largely lacking in his speech, during which several of his listeners in the Kremlin were seen nodding
off. No doubt Mr Putin sought a nationalist response to his diatribe against
Turkey, and no doubt he will find one, but if there are citizens in Russia who
would have liked a reasoned account of how well Moscow’s Ukrainian and Syrian
initiatives are playing out, they did not get it on Thursday.
That is because the costs of both have so far outweighed any gains.
Crimea has been in the dark since Crimean Tatars and their Ukrainian allies brought down the power
lines that supply the peninsula late last month. Perhaps, mused one Tatar
leader whimsically, the wind had blown the pylons away. Mr Putin has just
inaugurated an “energy bridge”, an undersea cable that will put some lights on
again soon, but it will take much longer than that to restore a full supply.
The Crimean blackout has made relations with Kiev, such as they were, worse, as
have Russian demands for changes to the EU-Ukraine free trade agreement, due to
come into force in January.
The next step, unless there is a breakthrough, will be further Russian
trade sanctions on Ukraine. This is against the background of the failure of
both countries to meet their commitments to a ceasefire, withdrawal of troops
and heavy weapons, and the establishment of an internationally monitored
security zone along the Ukraine-Russia border. This overall decline in
relations is a problem for Europe, but also a problem for Russia. Moscow is
finding its local proxies both demanding and unbiddable, has returned to the
idea that influence in Kiev is more important than taking territory in the
east, and wants to trade some kind of cooperation in Syria for some kind of deal
over Ukraine and EU sanctions. Whether that is or is not realistic, the prospect
would hardly be advanced by more trade war, or, worse, a return to high levels
of hostilities.
In Syria, Russian intervention has certainly succeeded in propping up
President Assad at a point when the regime and its Iranian backers were worried
that it might be going down for good. But that is not the same as saying it has
reversed its fortunes. The first major offensive by Syrian troops after the
Russians came in with their planes was bloodily stopped in its tracks by rebels
armed with wire-guided antitank missiles supplied by their Gulf supporters.
Like the United States, Russia has found that air power is not a magic potion.
Diplomacy is equally tricky: Russia’s intelligence and other arrangements with
Iran and Iraq constitute an inherently fragile alliance that could easily
crumble, in particular over the future of President Assad, with the Iranians
suspicious that Russia might be ready at some stage to dump the Syrian leader.
As a result of the clash with Turkey, Mr Putin may be learning the lesson that it takes a long time to make
a friend, but only a day to lose one. Russo-Turkish relations have been on an
upward curve since 1992, with the former president Dmitry Medvedev, in Mr
Putin’s audience on Thursday, prominent in the improvement. Bombing Turkey’s
ethnic kin was not the smartest of moves, whatever we may think of the Turkish
reaction. Russia’s aim was to transform the Syrian situation. Instead, it has
merely added its blunders to those of others.
In the eyes of many Russians, the Syrian adventure has also brought
tragedy for their own civilians, in the shape of the bombing of a plane full of
holidaymakers. Rightly or wrongly, such a shock is seen as proof that there is
a price to pay for intervention abroad, a view that should be weighed before
taking action, as it has been in the British debate about airstrikes in Syria.
No such debate took place in Russia. It is still possible, both in Ukraine and
Syria, that Russia could end by contributing solutions. Western countries bear
a share of the blame for these two enormous messes, but we need a more
temperate and less bellicose Russia if we are to find them.
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